Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 56:221 (Jan 1899)
Article: The Outlook In Theology
Author: Edward Lewis Curtis

BSac 56:221 (Jan 1899) p. 1

The Outlook In Theology1

Prof. Edward Lewis Curtis

The subject of the outlook or whither in respect to the Bible and Christian doctrine is often depressing, since old notions once held quite essential to evangelical Christianity seem now to be crumbling, and the cry is sometimes heard, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” We ought, however, to have no fear for the future.

“Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to he;
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.”

A living, thinking church cannot go backward. Not all churches, however, think or have liberty of thought. Sometimes old forms of belief become incorporated into the very structure of a denomination, so that a future growth in the knowledge and wisdom of God is apparently denied to its membership. This is the condition of the Greek and Roman Catholic churches. These churches have ceased to make any real contributions to religious

BSac 56:221 (Jan 1899) p. 2

thought. This we sometimes fear will be the fate of the Presbyterian Church of this country, but never, we trust, of our own Congregational body. Liberty of thought, intellectual and spiritual progress, have always been the glory of the church whose membership has been honored by such names as Charles G. Finney of Oberlin, Nathaniel Taylor of New Haven, Horace Bushnell of Hartford, Edwards A. Park of Andover, and Henry Ward Beecher. Some of these names strike one now as those of staunch conservatives, but in their own day they represented forward movements in theology. New England Congregationalism bequeathed largely to the Presbyterian Church also its progressive elements, giving that church such men as Henry B. Smith and Roswell D. Hitchcock, whose work in setting the direction of Union Seminary has now been repudiated by the Presbyterian Church.

Growth in Christian thought, however, is measured by centuries rather than decades. The present conclusions of the Higher Criticism, in spite of numerous changes in detail, were in their essential particulars voiced by Eichhorn and DeWette and other scholars at the beginning of this century, and dominant features of the new theology may be found in the writings of Schleiermacher of eighty years ago. Horace Bushnell and Frederick W. Robertson fifty years ago were proclaiming much also that even now we call new forms of thought. The next fifty years then, without a sudden break, but with a development as gradual as the passage of a bud into a flower, will probably witness a construction in Christian doctrine along the same lines in which it has been moving during the past fi...